Why You Need People-Oriented Content & 10 Ways To Create It

For many of us marketers and business owners, it gets hard to focus time and energy on creating excellent content that converts and sells. Because of this, it’s not uncommon to find content falling flat and converting only a few sales here or there, but no long-term, real engagement.

What’s wrong? How can you fix it?

One of the biggest problems could be a common pitfall: your content has become too old, cold sales copy, and isn’t focused on the person you are trying to reach.

Let’s take a look at how you can avoid this cold sales copy and create hot, user-oriented content that can drive sales and long-term client relationships.

Whoa There: Hold Your Horses on That Cold Sales Copy

Trying to sell your products “cold” is going to make it very difficult for you to make any legitimate sales. Cold sales copy can be in the form of emails, web content, mail fliers and TV ads, and all can be just as annoying to customers.

You see, about once a month, I get this flier for a car insurance company — it is the same old flier I get each and every month. Nothing is changed on the flier and it doesn’t tell me why I need to switch from the trusted car insurance I already have and prefer. By continually sending on this flier, that company is wasting a lot of time, money and effort.

How so? Because what I, and so many others, do is toss that flier away. I don’t think about it until I get it again, and my only thoughts are how annoying it is to get it each month.

One of the many reasons this doesn’t work is because, as I said, it is cold sales copy that is only focusing on making the sale instead of on reaching clients. This is a big mistake many people make, and many business owners don’t know just how to improve their content.

Why Do You Need User-Oriented Content?

It can be pretty difficult to convince an audience that they need to buy your product or services when they can’t see or feel the item. People seem to be much more likely to buy something when they can physically be near it, and this is definitely a problem when selling online. However, a great way to start creating copy that helps convince someone to buy your product is to create user-oriented content.

According to Stephanie Walden at Mashable, a user-oriented experience can really help drive brand loyalty with customers. This helps set up a relationship with the customers, helping you keep clients for the long-term. It is absolutely difficult for an online company to maintain excellent sales with one-time-only shoppers. But by creating user-oriented copy, you are well on your way to creating a relationship and helping make your clients long-lasting.

10 Amazing Ways to Write Content Your Audience WANTS to See

Just how can you create user-oriented content that your audience wants to see? I am going to take a look and help you get on the track to creating excellent content now!

1. Listen to Your Audience and Do What They Suggest. One of the best ways to make sure you are writing content that is user-oriented is to listen to your audience. Listening to your audience is an immensely important aspect of all content creation, and it helps you establish the relationship you want to help make your business thrive.

2. Thoroughly Research Your Target Audience and Know Your Target. While you are listening to your audience, you should also take the time to research them and know your target. You can research your audience by looking into your analytics, demographics and other great tools to see ages, location and more. You can also work to create a buyer persona for different demographics, helping your form a basis of research to help get you started.

3. Survey Real People Before Creating Your Content. Once you know your demographic, you can start to send out surveys to real people before you begin creating your content. This is an excellent way to follow point one, giving you the chance to listen to your audience and find out what it is they really want to see on your website and blog.

4. Take a Look at Trends Amongst Consumers. If you are following your clients on social media or are able to take a look at their channels, then you should take the opportunity to research the trends. According to Stacy Goodman from Newscred, researching the trends will not only help you see what your audience likes but also who your audience really is. You can also look at what other resources they share from other websites. Is it DIY, cooking, cleaning? Whatever it is, you have the chance to find what your clients like and create more user-oriented content for them.

5. Have Users Submit User-Generated Content via Email, Hashtags and Replies.According to Rick Whittington from Business 2 Community, user-generated content is a great way to promote community on your site. It is also a great way to create user-oriented content since it is coming straight from your clients. You can have people submit their images of or with your product, have them participate in forums, feature questions from clients, and utilize contests, as well as social sharing. This will help you create excellent user-generated content that will speak to your audience. It is also the perfect way to spice up your existing content.

6. Have a Fun Event for Your Audience to Come To. Another great way to have user-oriented content is to host a fun event for your audience. This can be a physical event where you take pictures and share the content online or it can be something you host online. This will help you generate new content from your clients while also helping them feel like they are part of something big.

7. Always Target Specific Age Groups with Different Strategies. While many businesses seem to not realize this, you do reach out to more age ranges than you realize. Many times people have a very narrow idea of the age range they are reaching and don’t create useful strategies for the others. Take the time to research and know all of the age groups you are reaching with your company and start to create different strategies with your content. Why do you need different strategies for different ages? There are many reasons, but Andrea Lehr from PlayBuzz points out a few great reasons. These range from different age groups being online at different times of the day to different content types reaching out.

8. Write Content With User-Centric Language.Writing content that is user-centric might be a bit difficult for you at first because you want to promote your product or services. However, the more business-centric and not user-centric your wording is, the more likely you are to drive clients away. Instead of writing about your product and just how it can help you clients, write blogs that are directed at them. Give them a common problem they can relate with and write a user-centric blog that focuses on the answer. And remember, it is absolutely possibly to push and advertise your product while writing user-centric content.

9. Create Content That is On Your Audience’s Level. Another way to make sure your written content is user-oriented is to make sure that you create content that is on your audience’s level. Some great ways to do this are to avoid using jargon in your content, creating lists to make your content easy to scan, and utilizing sub-headers or images to break up the text. When you start creating content like this, you will find that it is easier to reach a broader audience and that you can easily start working on creating relationships with your clients, helping to make them loyal.

10. Have an Awesome Social Media Strategy. Social media is excellent because it makes it absolutely easy to create user-oriented content. All you need to do is come up with an amazing social media strategy and start creating content that works with your followers, providing engagement, clicks, and driving traffic. There are tons of various engagement hacks you can utilize, helping you create one of the best user-oriented social media experiences for your clients. Remember, don’t hesitate to tweak your strategy as you learn more about your clients and work to give them the content they want.

Focus On Your Clients and You Will Reap the Benefits

As you can see, even when you think you’re saving time and money by creating your same old sales copy, you really aren’t. Your clients want content that is focused on them, and when you start doing that, you will be able to convert visitors into customers and maintain your client base. This is excellent news for businesses, no matter large or small, physical or online. However, you don’t even have to worry about taking time out of your schedule to create this content if you have awesome content services that take the footwork out of it.

Focus on your user and not “selling” in your web content, across the board — and your happier readers will thank you with more conversions!

Julia McCoy's life career happened when she left medical school to follow her passion in copywriting and SEO at 19 years old. A solely self-taught entrepreneur, she built an online copywriting agency a year later in 2011, Express Writers, which has grown to include more than 60 talented copywriters and editors with hundreds of clients around the world. Follow Julia's blog for all things copywriting & SEO.

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Comments

Great article, Julia, and I shared it with our content writers here. The most common complaint I get from those guys when I see lackluster content is that the volume and monotony of what they create makes it difficult for them to stay on their creative A game. This is something I can totally understand from my own experience. I wrote the editorial pieces as a paid staff member for my school newspaper when I was still an undergrad student. I was an accomplished blogger back in those days, but after being in a situation where I was forced to write, I often hit brick walls, both psychologically and from a literary sense. It's as if the sheer fact that you are no longer acting completely on your own accord triggers some subconscious mechanism in your brain. Weird to be sure, but that is the only way I know how to describe it.

For an individual business that writes their own content, I am sure that this is not much of a problem. However, when I have content writers that are, in some cases, expected to crank out 80 to 100 pieces a month, it's understandable that they devolve towards generalized melancholy and ambivalence at times.